Chipzilla is trying to boost promotion of its desktop CPU platforms by dividing the market into six pieces.

According to Digitimes which has its paws on the cunning plan said that Intel is talking about something called an Enthusiast Tower.

An Enthusiast Tower, is not a ride at Disneyland, it is the gaming, video/audio content and high performance sector. What Intel defines as “mainstream” has high performance-price ratios. “All-in-one (AIO) PCs”, “Mini PCs (NUC)”, “Portable AIO PCs” and “Compute Sticks” make up the remaining pieces of Intel’s marketing pie.

The Enthusiast Tower part of Intel’s business is doing well. It is seeing growing sales, while demand for NUC products and Compute Sticks is also gradually picking up.

Intel said that its MiniPCs will support both Windows and Chrome OS, and the other five only Windows 8.1/10.

In early August, Chipzilla will announce several K-series processors including Core i7-6700K, and Z170 chipsets and will unveil Skylake-S and Skylake-U series processors and H170/B150 chipsets in early September.

Intel will start mass shipping Skylake processors in October and November. Its top-end six-core and eight-core Broadwell-E processors will be in the shops in the first quarter of 2016. They will use LGA 2011-3 and supporting the X99 chipsets and DDR4 memory.

Apparently there are 13 percent of people who instinctively buy products are doomed to fail.

In a study published in the Journal of Marketing Research, researchers identified particular kinds of consumers whose preferences can predict products that will flop, calling those folks "harbingers of failure."

"Certain customers systematically purchase new products that prove unsuccessful," wrote the study authors. "Their early adoption of a new product is a strong signal that a product will fail."

The researchers looked at retail purchases made by about 130,000 consumers at a national convenience store chain. Exactly 13 per cent of them had buying habits that predicted failure of a new product – or one that didn't surviving more than three years.

Apparently these 13 per cent found that half or more of the products they bought were doomed to die before they had a chance to make it big.

These people were the early adopters of Zune, betamax, and are probably writing cheques for the iWatch as we speak.

The researchers said that the more they buy, the less likely the product will succeed.

It is not because these 13 per cent are particularly dumb. It is just that they are consistently buying things that other customers won't, for whatever reason.

This means that researchers looking at market buying should not look so much at the numbers, but really who is buying their products.

Next time you get to complain about the lack of SLI support or Crossfire support, you will have to remember this number.

According to our well informed industry insiders, there are only about 300,000 people who own SLI or Crossfire setups. This doesn’t sound like a big number at all, considering that the PC gaming market, according to Jon Peddie Research, is a $21.7 billion market. This number combines CPUs, motherboards, GPUs, Monitors, peripherals, SSD and everything else you need to play games on a PC.

It is hard to find the right numbers on how many GPUs Nvidia or AMD sell, but you would expect that SLI and Crossfire enthusiasts capture a bit more than 0.3 million. This can also give you an idea that the GPUs we can so much about, including Geforce GTX Titan, Geforce GTX 980 TI or AMD Radeon Fury X are a tiny fraction of overall sales.

What we have been preaching for a while these 300K people really know what they are doing, most of them at least. These are usually super high end enthusiasts, spending a lot of time on forums, comment sections of tech websites. They are very opinionated and they are really passionate about who they support - AMD or Nvidia.

In case you are one of these 300,000 you should feel special, as not too many people spend $1,000 to $2,000 on two GPUs. In case the game supports it, and in case that the driver is there, there is no doubt that two cards are better than one. The big obstacle is that two cards e.g. Fury X usually cost twice as much as one Fury X card. The same logic applies to GTX 980 TI cards, and let's not forget that you also need a better PSU, chassis and so on.

Jon Peddie researchers are quite certain that the gaming market will grow from the existing $21.71 billion to $23.11 billion market by 2017, and with that we expect that the number of SLI and Crossfire setups will grow.

Innovations like G-Sync and FreeSync have definitely boosted monitor sales and many people want to get 3840x2160 aka 4K monitors or some curved or wide screen monitors to make their gaming better.

In case you own a mainstream card such as the Geforce GTX 760 / 960 or Radeon R9 280 / 380, don’t be sad, you are still better off than more than 50 percent of market that are stuck with Intel integrated graphics. According to a Steam survey, the most popular "graphics card" in the world is still Intel HD Graphics 4000.

Technology companies are starting to come unstuck in China as the economy slows down, and there are fears that things might even be worse as the government might be cooking the books.

Western firms are preparing for slower growth in China after Beijing said it expected growth to stabilise at 7.5 per cent for the next few years. But analysts are concerned official economic statistics are manipulated to suit Beijing’s political needs.

China grew 7.4 per cent in the third quarter compared with a year ago, the seventh consecutive quarter of slower growth. But that is the sort of growth which is not good for the technology industry which has been looking to China to make up for the falling sales in Europe and the US.

Microsoft, which is already fighting a losing battle against piracy in the region, was hoping that its new Windows 8 operating system would take off on cheap and cheerful tablets behind the bamboo curtain. In times of economic slow down China is less likely to improve networks and hardware in the short term.

The glorious Win-Tel alliance upon which the sun never set, appears to be crumbling from within, according to IHS iSuppli analyst Craig Stice.

He said in a report that the willingness of Intel and Microsoft to work together is also fraying as each company increasingly adopts strategies "that work against each other's interests. Stice claimed that the days of the pair marching shoulder to shoulder, dominating the PC market with their closely tied operating system and microprocessor technologies were fading.

The strategy has begun to change in visible ways during the mobile era. This is despite surface appearances that indicate once-mighty Wintel is still pretty mighty, actually.

But going forward and if current trends hold, both Microsoft and Intel stand to lose a good deal of their market share in operating systems and microprocessors, respectively, the analyst said. Wintel is expected to suffer a declining share of the 'new' computer market, a category consisting not just of PCs but also of the much faster-growing smartphone and media tablet segments," Stice added.

Microsoft had a 44 percent share of the OS market for PCs, tablets, and smartphones in 2011, according to IHS iSuppli. This could fall to a third in 2016, the research firm predicted. Intel's projected market share decline over that same period follows a similar line—from 41 percent of the global microprocessor market to 29 percent, according to IHS iSuppli.

If such a market share decline for Wintel does come to pass, however, it might not actually affect the numbers of units shipped by the two tech giants much at all. For example, IHS iSuppli forecast that the total size of the microprocessor market will double from 2011 to 2016, meaning Intel could lose a lot market share and still wind up moving more chips than ever.

Speaking at the shareholders meeting on Tuesday, TSMC’s CEO Morris Chang said that the company is cautious when it comes to the US economy, since it has recovered at a slower rate than expected.

Chang based his opinion on a number of indicators, including employment data. Furthermore, he acknowledged that the EU crisis won’t make things any easier.

TSMC’s North American clients account for as much as 70 percent of the company’s wafer sale revenue. This pretty much sums it up when it comes to importance of this market, and at the same time puts TSMC’s concern in perspective.

For the year 2011, TSMC reported net profits of NT$134.2 billion on consolidated revenues of NT$427.08 billion. The company’s earnings, gross margins and operating margins all dropped in 2011 compared to the year before - by 17, 4 and 4.8 percent, respectively. The company’s consolidated revenues for 2011 are up by 9.2 percent compared to 2010.

Strong results, aggressive market advances and competitors' misfortunes have prompted analysts to estimate that Chinese computer manufacturer Lenovo will take the seat of global PC market leader from HP next year. The company is currently some four or five percent behind.

Chinese computer market is the biggest in the world and Lenovo’s 30 percent share there is a significant advantage at home. In fact, the market made up for 42 percent of group revenue, with Lenovo leaving the likes of Acer, Dell, Asus and HP in the dust.

The company sold 2.5 million PCs in China from January to March 2012. Lenovo’s Chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing said that the company had a 59 percent increase in quarterly net profit and reported strong growth in smaller cities in China, so future seems bright as well.

The competition, namely Dell and HP, haven’t had the best of times as of late and seem to have made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Both HP and Dell reported sharp quarterly profit drops, with HP even cutting 27,000 jobs.

In order to advance on the market, Lenovo had to rely on volume sales. This resulted in Lenovo being the top vendor in emerging markets such as Russia and India but reporting operating losses.

Yang said that the company will find ways to profit in these markets once the company gets to certain volume or 10 percent market share. Apparently, getting customers now means profit later when it’s time to upgrade, especially in the case of corporate businesses.

HTC’s financial report claims that the company’s business operations took a hit in Q1 2012 for the second consecutive time.

The company’s consolidated revenues for Q1 2012 stand at $2.29 billion. The gross margin was 25.03 percent, which is a 2.08pp on-quarter drop and 4.22pp on-year drop.

HTC’s CEO Peter Chou attributed the drop to strong iPhone 4S competition in the US. Chou confirmed that the company will launch its LTE and HSPA+ supporting, One-branded smartphones via AT&T and T/Mobile as well as LTE supporting EVO with Sprint Nextel in Q2.

Although the LTE and HSPA+ charge should increase the company’s market share in the US, Chou conceded that it is impossible for HTC to retake the dominant market share it once had there. On the other hand, the company has done quite well in Europe and Asia and expects further growth in these regions, particularly China.

IDC Asia-Pacific has been shuffling its tarot cards and has seen rebound of the PC market in the first quarter of 2012 as well as a tall dark stranger entering its life. Such predictions are optimistic as they follow a 33 percent decline in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Juan-Jin Ng, market analyst for personal systems research at IDC said that 2012 is more promising. He said that the hard disk drive (HDD) supply will normalise by April 2012, there will be public segment rollouts in the Philippines and consumer demand from the launch of Intel's new Ivy Bridge processor.

The Philippines is a good bellwether as it was hit hard by hard disk drive (HDD) supply shortages since manufacturing plants in Thailand had their operations thrown into disarray by severe flooding. The strengthening peso against the US dollar meant that the remittances of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were worth less than before. In addition, the seasonal typhoons that hit Metro Manila further put pressure on consumer spending.

Mini-notebooks, which are usually the major contributor to the Philippine PC market, faced the most significant drop in the fourth quarter of 2011 at 44 per cent. Telco bundling programs for smart phones were dead in the water in fourth quarter and this too affected overall mini-notebook shipments.

Tarot readers working for the analyst outfit Ovum say that the market for global service provider switching and routing market will hit revenues of $20.5bn in 2017. Currently this is sitting at $13.3bn in 2010, with a rise of 6.4 per cent over seven years, predicts Ovum.

In a new forecast report, the independent market analyst outfit reveals IP traffic growth is driving strong demand for switches and routers in service provider networks. This growth is expected to accelerate further as fixed and mobile broadband subscriber penetration rates increase and consumer video applications drive ever-growing levels of network traffic.

David Krozier, principal analyst at Ovum said that carriers will need to invest in growing their IP infrastructure or risk losing subscribers. In developing nations, carriers are building out their 3G wireless networks, while developed nations are investing in LTE to accommodate mobile bandwidth demand, he said.

North America was the largest of Ovum's geographical regions in 2011 and the Asia-Pacific region, which contains two of the top three global economies, China and Japan, was a close second.

Ovum forecasts 9.7 per cent growth in the Asia-Pacific market in 2012 and 4.0 per cent growth in North America. The companz expects the Asia-Pacific region to surpass North America as the largest regional market for telecom switches and routers equipment for 2012.